Friday, October 3, 2014

Restaurant Review: Three Seasons

As part of the second conference I was at a few weeks ago, we had team dinners following food truck night. The conference attendees were split up into groups of 10-15 and assigned different restaurants nearby.

I thought that was a brilliant idea because it gave us a chance to get to know a smaller subset of people much better. I was lucky enough to be in a group where I already knew a couple of people but the others were either complete strangers or people I barely knew. So it was a good opportunity to have real conversations to get to know people. Which I prefer as, despite my indoctrination in business school, surface schmoozing isn't my strength. Actual conversations beyond the weather and how long each of us has worked at the company is much more meaningful.

Even better, I had been to Three Seasons previously but only once before and with that size group, I could safely recommend a couple of favorites I had tried and still partake of the other dishes I'd never had so I could try something new.

Three Seasons is Vietnamese fusion, similar to Tamarine, although I have to give Tamarine the edge for good food. Still, Three Seasons is also good, particularly their shaking beef and garlic noodles with prawns. Those were my favorites that I begged recommended the group try.

Chicken Satay appetizer

Shaking Beef

Curry Chicken

The Curry Chicken was something I hadn't had before but it ended up being a third favorite to add to my list. I normally don't eat a lot of curry as the flavor can be too strong for me but this was a good balance, not too much curry but pretty tasty.

Garlic Noodles with Prawns

Fried Rice

I didn't try all of the dishes since I was saving room (you can guess for what) but I snapped pictures of them all. Since I was dining with relative strangers who didn't know my penchant for taking photos of every edible thing that hit the table, they were remarkably forbearing and humored me, which I appreciated.

A veggie dish I didn't eat

Lamb Chops

Fried Snapper

But let's cut to the chase and get to dessert. My tablemates were "full" but fortunately I found a few kindred spirits who were game for dessert. With their input, we ordered the banana egg rolls and the molten chocolate cake.

Banana Egg Rolls

The banana egg rolls were a little more anemic thinner than I expected and you definitely should eat these a little warm while they had some crunch. I like the concept of them but I would've made them fatter. It was almost like eating a puffy french fry whereas I had been hoping for something more spring roll-sized. Still, it's hard to go wrong with fried caramelized bananas with caramel, chocolate sauce and ice cream.

Molten Chocolate Cake

You can go even less wrong with molten chocolate cake. I know they're very commonplace in restaurants now and have been for some time. Long enough that food snobs probably look askance at them. But, while I am a dessert snob, I never want to be so snooty that I would yawn over warm chocolate cake with a liquid center. With ice cream. C'mon, there's no place for that kind of snobbery here.